


Bread and His Name

by Muccamukk



Series: Tripartite Love [1]
Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Caretaking, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feelings, Hurt/Comfort, Melodrama, Multi, Period-Typical Homophobia, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-02-23 05:51:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23773462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: Johnny settled into married life, trying not to think about the war or the feelings he hadn't acted on. It was going pretty well until Bull Randleman washed up at his door in the middle of the night.
Relationships: Johnny Martin/Bull Randleman, Johnny Martin/Pat Martin, Johnny Martin/Pat Martin/Bull Randleman, Pat Martin/Bull Randleman
Series: Tripartite Love [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108412
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41
Collections: Loose Lips Sink Ships Prompt Meme





	Bread and His Name

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Greg Brown's "The Poet Game."
> 
> Written for the Loose Lips Sink Ships prompt: "A year after they get home, Bull shows up at Johnny's place needing a place to stay. (Can be Johnny/Bull/Pat, if author likes, or not.)"
> 
> This fic contains descriptions of queer bashing, societal homophobia, and has a lot of discussion dealing with expectations of masculinity and marriage at the time, as well as discussion of infidelity. And everyone being very dramatic.

Johnny didn't hear the knock at first. He'd already gone to bed, and was curled up against Pat's side in exhausted contentment, his hand resting on her growing belly, and if he thought the sound was anything, he thought it was the sound of distant artillery that he heard sometimes, whether it was there or not.

The next knock was louder, loud enough for Pat to stir and ask sleepily if Johnny had heard something. Then Johnny heard it clearly, an insistent pounding on the front door. Pat was half sitting by then, and Johnny felt protectiveness and irritation rising in equal measure.

"I'll go see who the hell it is," he muttered, rolling out of bed and yanking his robe off a hook. He considered going into the kitchen for a knife, but the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, hadn't shown too much sign of being dangerous. It was probably a neighbour, though who Johnny couldn't imagine. They'd only been in this house for a couple of months, and Johnny hadn't gone out of his way to be friendly.

"You have any idea what time it is?" he demanded as he yanked the door open, then stopped cold.

Whoever he'd been expecting to see at eleven o'clock on a Wednesday night, it wasn't Bull Randleman, and certainly not Bull with his army ruck over his shoulder, a bruise purpling the whole side of his jaw, and a messy cut above the opposite eye. He had a two day beard, and the eye that wasn't growing a shiner had dark rings visible even in the low light escaping the front hall. He didn't have a hat.

"Jesus," Johnny whispered, and stepped back, automatically making way for Bull to come in.

Bull didn't move, just swayed on Johnny's front step like he hadn't thought as far as what he'd do if Johnny opened the door. He knuckles were gripping the strap of his barracks bag, but under the white they were split and scabbing over.

Johnny hadn't finished tying the belt of his robe; it fell open as he stepped forward, and the chill of the night on his bare chest made him shiver. "Bull," he said more softly, his voice as gentle as he could make it while his mind scrambled to catch up with what he was seeing.

"Johnny." Bull nodded like he was agreeing that Johnny had gotten his name right.

"Get your ass in here," Johnny snapped, He grabbed the elbow of Bull's jacket and pulled him towards the hall.

Johnny didn't have the strength or leverage to move Bull if he didn't want to move, but it seemed like the physical encouragement worked where words hadn't, and Bull followed him in far enough for Johnny to get the door shut behind him. In the full light of the hall, Bull looked even worse. He looked as bad as he had in Haguenau, before they'd gotten showers.

"Jesus Christ," Johnny muttered again.

The floorboards creaked behind Johnny, and he turned to see Pat standing at the edge of the hall, one hand on the doorframe, the other curled around her stomach. Her hair was falling out of the kerchief she slept in, a tangle of black curls around her shoulder, and her eyes were wary. Just the sight of her was enough to have Bull backing away towards the door, trying to shake loose of Johnny's hold on his sleeve.

"Don't you fucking move," Johnny hissed, hopefully too low for Pat to hear, and Bull obligingly froze in place.

That left Johnny room to figure out how to explain Bull to Pat and vice versa, which he was having trouble with, not yet knowing what the hell was going on himself, but Pat pre-empted him.

"You look like Sergeant Randleman. Johnny keeps your picture."

"Yes, Mrs. Martin," Bull said, nodding again. He dragged his attention back to Johnny, and muttered, "Johnny, I'm sorry, I... I wasn't thinking right, coming here, I just..." he shook his head, deriding his own stupidity then concluded, "I'll go. I'm sorry."

Johnny still didn't know what the hell was going on, but he knew for a fact that he wouldn't let any of the Easy Company boys wander off into the night, wounded and alone, not while he had a roof over his head that he could offer to share. "You ain't going anywhere," he insisted, and reached for the strap of Bull's ruck. "Dammit, Bull."

It had to be a sign of Bull's exhaustion that he gave the thing up without a struggle. It didn't weigh that much, especially not given Johnny's suspicion that it carried just about everything Bull owned.

Bull nodded dully, all his fight spent.

"Come on," Johnny said, tugging Bull forward again. "We've got a spare room. We can put you up overnight, anyway. We'll figure out what to do in the morning."

"Thank you," Bull said, and then looked past Johnny to Pat and repeated, "Thank you, ma'am."

Johnny tugged Bull into the room that was half a guest room and already half a nursery and dropped his ruck at the foot of the bed. Bull stood in the doorway, and Johnny recognised the look of a man too shocked and exhausted to move another step. He let his fingers trail over Bull's bicep as he left, feeling the muscles under his jacket as strong as ever.

"I'll get you some towels," Johnny said, and ran into Pat in the hallway, her arms already full. Instead of handing them over to Johnny, she jerked her head towards the kitchen. Johnny followed her.

"Pat," he started, his voice just a whisper, even though the whole situation made him feel like screaming. "Pat, love, we can't turn him out, not in the shape he's in."

Pat shoved the towels into Johnny's hands and folded her arms. Her breasts pressed against the threadbare cotton of her favourite nightie, and Johnny tried not to think of the show she'd given Bull. "Of course we're not turning him out," Pat answered in an equally heated whisper. "But he's been in a hell of a tangle, and recently. You better find out if he's got trouble riding in on his heels."

It only showed how absolutely befuddled Johnny had been by the whole situation that he hadn't thought of that yet. "And if he does?" Johnny asked, knowing that he was even less likely to cast Bull out on his own if there was another fight coming, at the same time as he realised that that decision wasn't holding up his duty as the man who'd promised to love honour and protect his wife no matter what came. He just prayed that she wouldn't ask that of him.

Pat sighed, like she expected better from Johnny, which was probably fair. "Then we'll need to be ready," she explained patently.

"Right," Johnny said, and took the towels back into the spare room.

Bull had gotten all the way to taking a couple steps towards the bed, but still hadn't gotten his jacket or boots off. He was looking around like he'd never seen the inside of a house before.

Johnny dumped the towels on the dresser and said, "Pat wants to know if we should be expecting the truck that hit ya."

"What?" Bull asked, then shook his head when he worked it out. "No, reckon I left all that in Michigan."

"All right," Johnny said. He was itching to ask what kind of trouble Bull was in, but it didn't seem right to press a man so clearly at the end of his rope. In the end, it didn't really matter. If Bull needed shelter, Johnny would take him in.

"Sorry, Johnny," Bull said, and slumped onto the edge of the bed. "I didn't know where else to go."

Johnny just shook his head. There wasn't any sense telling Bull he was welcome here if he hadn't listened the first two times. "How bad you done up?" he asked instead.

"It's all right," Bull said, and then undercut his point by wincing when he shrugged.

"Sure," Johnny agreed, "I can see that."

Instead of talking back, Bull just hunched forward, elbows on his knees and head bowed like he didn't have the strength to hold it up.

"Here." Johnny knelt in front of Bull and tugged at his boot laces. He was still wearing jump boots, and his suit was rough and bettered at the hems. One knee was soaked through with blood, but the tattered quality of the clothes had an older origin. Johnny rested his head on Bull's good knee and took a deep breath, trying to tell himself that there'd be another time to worry about the kind of shape Bull had been in since the end of the war. Johnny gritted his teeth and pushed back the urge to go out and find someone to hit. There weren't a hell of a lot of things in the world that worked out to be fair, but the idea that Bull Randleman was struggling in peacetime wasn't one Johnny was willing to tolerate. The feel of pulling jump boots off of weary feet pulled Johnny right back, and he felt his body tightening, ready to spring up and fight, no matter that he was in sock feet and shorts.

He heard a step at the door, and snapped his body around, but of course it was just Pat. She was holding a big bowl of hot water cradled over her stomach and the household's little tin first aid box in the other hand. "Thought you'd need these," she said, then, when Johnny took them from her, "I'm going back to bed. Some of us have work in the morning."

Johnny leaned in to kiss her, sloshing hot water on them both, and Pat rolled her eyes and twisted away. She crossed the hall, and the door to their bedroom clicked shut behind her.

"You better show me the worst of it," Johnny said, setting the bowl on the floor next to Bull's boots and opening the first aid kit on the bed beside him. It was mostly just the sort of bandages you'd put on a small cut, but there was a bottle of Benzalkonium chloride too, and some other odds and ends. It occurred to Johnny that he ought to be better about keeping it up to date.

"Since when are you a medic?" Bull asked, but didn't resist as Johnny pushed his jacket off and started unbuttoning his shirt. It was grubby with sweat and some stains that turned out to be blood from minor scrapes when Johnny got it off. The abrasions were nothing against the purpling bruises covering Bull's back and left side.

"Jesus Christ," Johnny breathed, and tried to push back the image of Bull curled up on the ground while the blows kept falling. He felt his throat tighten, but he couldn't tell if it was from rage or tears. Unable to speak, he folded a piece of gauze into a square and poured some of the disinfectant onto it. He waited for Bull to tighten his jaw and grimace that he was ready before dabbing the gauze against the cut over Bull's eye, but Bull still hissed in a sharp breath. "Sorry," Johnny muttered, though they both knew it had to be done.

Bull said nothing, just tipped his head to let Johnny get a better look at the abrasion on his cheek. He kept his eyes fixed on the open doorway behind Johnny.

"When this happen?" Johnny asked. He'd moved down to small breaks in the skin on Bull's side, the kind you got from the heavy impact of a work boot on unprotected flesh.

"This morning," Bull answered, tone still dull. "Jumped me on the way to the foundry."

He would explain it all if Johnny demanded answers, Johnny knew, but it wasn't something Johnny was going to ask. He didn't think he could take much more without actually hitting something. Instead he prodded down Bull's ribs, watching Bull's face as he winced slightly at the bruises, but didn't cry out like he would have at a break. "You pissing blood?"

Bull shook his head slightly. He still wasn't looking at Johnny, and Johnny hated that. There wasn't a hell of a lot he didn't hate right now.

His hands were a little too rough when he yanked Bull's belt open, and the way Bull stiffened at that made Johnny's blood freeze. He felt a little dizzy as he looked up at Bull and tried to think of a way to calmly asked his best friend how far his attackers had gotten. The words stuck in his throat like a tangle of barbed wire, and he cursed himself for not being able to get them out. He was too damn scared to ask, he realised, and the shame of that curdled in his gut alongside the horror and rage.

"Oh, Johnny," Bull said softly. He cupped the side of Johnny's face with his scraped hand. "It weren't like that. Told you: I'm all right."

"You ain't," Johnny insisted, but he could breathe again, and the rush of air didn't make him any less dizzy. His hands had started to shake.

"I will be," Bull told him. He lifted his ass to get his trousers off, but then took the bottle and gauze out of Johnny's hands, saying, "I can look after the rest."

Johnny shook his head, and wiped at the blood on Bull's shin with the warm water. His knee had torn open, and must have bled most of the way from Michigan. He wished he remembered if you were supposed to pack gauze around an abrasion or give it some air. He should have paid more attention to Spina's first aid lectures, but'd always had something else to do. It didn't seem a lot worse that he'd used to get falling off his bike, anyway. In the end, he used one of the large bandages from the kit, and tried to tape it on as best he could. It was the details that kept him moving, one wound to the next, like checking ammunition before a fight. If he kept thinking of that, he wouldn't think of Bull nearly naked and utterly vulnerable in front of him, or the devastation in his eyes.

Bull's legs cleaned up, Johnny put the cooling bowl of water in Bull's lap and took Bull's hands in his. Bull had stopped resisting somewhere around taping the bandage on, and gone back to not looking Johnny in the eye. He was ashamed, Johnny thought, but he didn't know if it was because Bull had clearly come off worse in a fight, or because he needed help, or something worse. He couldn't do anything about that now. All he could do was cradle one of Bull's massive hands in both of his and gently wash the day's blood and grime off of it. A couple of the knuckles started to bleed again, sending wisps of red into the water, and they were all swollen and bruised.

"Got a few in, huh?" Johnny asked, but Bull didn't answer. The water was filthy by the time Johnny was done with both hands, and Johnny wondered if he should ask if Bull wanted a bath, but he looked too tired for it, so he just put more disinfectant on Bull's knuckles and let it rest.

Johnny stood and picked up the bowl, but then wasn't sure what to say. It had to be almost midnight by then, and they both needed sleep, but he didn't want to leave Bull alone in the dark, and he didn't want to pressure him to talk. He procrastinated by dumping the water down the bathroom sink. When he got back Bull had crawled into the bed and turned his back on the door. The first aid kit was neatly packed away and sitting next to Bull's boots.

"Good night," Johnny said softly and killed the light, but still felt rotten leaving Bull there, even when it was clearly what he wanted. He felt his way back into his own room in the dark and crawled under the covers next to Pat. He rested his head on her shoulder, and tried to let the warm softness of her body against his calm him.

Despite what she'd said, he could tell that she was still wide awake and worrying. "What's this about?" she asked.

Johnny shook his head. "I don't know," he told her. "I never seen him that shaken, not even..." he didn't finish that sentence, as an image of Bull huddled in a blanket in Bastogne, coughing and miserable filled his head.

"You'll find out," Pat said. She stroked Johnny's hair, and he tried to let her touch settle him, but he couldn't think past the anger and worry.

"Yeah," Johnny said. He wished he could say for sure that having an answer one way or another would at least put to rest the horrifying possibilities that kept flashing through his mind. He knew that none of them would be able to fix the knowledge that his best friend had been hurting, probably for a long time, and that Johnny hadn't done a thing about it, hadn't even known.

He tried to think back to the few letters he'd gotten from Bull, since he'd gotten home, but none of them had said much, just that he'd gone back to Michigan after all, instead of home to Arkansas, and that he had a new address. But Bull had never been much for writing, and Johnny hadn't worried that his two-page newsy replies to both letters hadn't gotten a proper answer. Clearly, he should have worried. He should have done something to make sure that Bull was doing okay, but even thinking back on it, he didn't know what he could have done, and at the time he hadn't imagined that Bull wasn't doing anything other than just fine. Bull was always fine. It was one of the great reliable facts of the world. Even wounded and trapped behind enemy lines, Bull had come out on top, somehow.

Still, Johnny had let him down, and he wasn't going to let that happen again, he promised himself that as he drifted into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

Johnny woke a scant six hours later when Pat rolled out of bed and stumbled towards the shower. That was Johnny's cue to get up and make a pot of coffee and start some breakfast. His feet carried his still half sleeping body all the way to the hallway, only for the sight of the closed door to the spare room to stop him cold. Should he check on Bull? If he was sleeping, Johnny didn't want to bother him. He left the door closed, and decided to start on pancakes, even if it was Thursday.

It all felt normal, listening to the morning news on the radio and the hiss of the shower, letting the smells of coffee and hot lard fill the house, then Bull shuffled in. Johnny could tell it was him without turning, would have been able to tell even if he hadn't known Bull was there, just from the sound of his steps and the huff of his breath. He'd knew Bull backwards and in the dark when he was a hundred years old. Just like that, Johnny was back in the first platoon CP in Haguenau, frying a dead man's scrounged potatoes, and boiling up a pot of what the US. Army insisted on calling coffee, and if he stepped outside, he'd be knee-deep in muck and blood, waiting for a shell to come down.

Johnny turned to Bull, wide eyed and heart pounding, and only felt more jolted out of place when he saw the start of Bull's beard coming in and his bruised and swollen face.

"Fuck, Bull," Johnny said, and before he could really think he'd crossed the kitchen and wrapped his arms around Bull's chest. He was wearing trousers and a clean undershirt, and it smelled of laundry soap and only faintly of perspiration. The cotton was soft against Johnny's cheek, and he made sure not to squeeze around Bull's chest too tightly.

"It... it's good to see you," Bull murmured, but he didn't hug Johnny back, just stood frozen in place. When Johnny looked up, Bull's hands were hovering a few inches from his shoulders, like he was afraid what might happen if he touched Johnny.

Johnny reached up to touch the unbruised side of Bull's jaw. His stubble was just long enough that it was starting to turn soft, like it had after Bastogne. "Yeah, you too, pal." Johnny made himself take a step back. "You look like shit."

Bull dipped his head in acknowledgement that that was about how he felt too, but before he said anything the bathroom door popped open releasing Pat and a cloud of steam. She stopped so fast that her bare feet squeaked on the floor, and pulled her robe more tightly around her. It still showed off a lot of leg. Bull deliberately turned his back on Pat, and she darted for the bedroom.

"Sorry," Bull muttered, flushing scarlet.

Johnny shook his head. "Just not used to company," he said, and turned back to the pan. It was hot enough to burn the first batch of pancakes, but Bull ploughed through them anyway. Alternating shovelled mouthfuls with gulps of too hot coffee like he thought Johnny would throw him out any second. They'd eaten like that on the line, trying to cram in as much food in as they could before the bullets started flying again. Johnny wished he'd slow the fuck down, but couldn't think of a way to say that without insulting Bull, who was skittish enough to start. Johnny wasn't used to walking softly around his best friend, and it pissed him off.

The sight of Pat in a roomy dress topped with the short jacket—which had formerly showed off the flare of her hips, before she'd let it out to accommodate the growing bump—improved Johnny's mode immensely. He leaned in and stole a kiss while Pat was angling in for the coffee, and it would have lingered except for the look on Bull's face, like the whole company had gotten a weekend pass and Bull alone had been gigged.

Johnny flipped three pancakes onto a plate for Pat, who plonked down at the kitchen table across from Bull, hooking her chair in with a stockinged leg. She tucked in for the first few bites, and Johnny almost thought he'd get to handle Bull on his own—though Christ knew how—but then she opened up and asked, "You get the number of that cement truck?"

Johnny focused on the pan in front of him, watching for the bubbles in the batter to firm up so he could flip them at a nice golden brown, but the truth was he was straining to hear the answer as much as Pat was.

But all Bull said was, "'Fraid it got mine, Mrs. Martin."

Pat forced a laugh, but Johnny could hear the anger under it. She believed that a man sitting at her table eating her food owed her a straight answer, and normally Johnny would agree—he did agree. Only he'd let Pat slit his wrists before he let her hurt Bull. _Don't ask this of me_ , he thought, as he had the night before, and the loyalty he felt for them both at once started to pull him apart.

Johnny flipped the pancakes and crossed to the table to pour them both coffee. They took it black, while Johnny drowned his in milk and sugar. He caught Pat's eye as he was leaning across the table and raised his eyebrows. She wrinkled her nose at him in response, but stopped needling Bull.

Instead, she took a new angle at him, saying, "You can call me 'Pat' if you like, Sergeant Randleman, I'm sure you've seen enough of me by now to justify it."

"Has he now?" Johnny demanded, the words coming out of habit. Showing off, he flipped the finished cakes out of the pan and onto Bull's plate, where they landed in a clatter of china and cutlery, and spun back to the stove, tossing back to Pat, "You going to start calling him 'Denver' then?"

"Depends if that's his name," Pat said, and Johnny could tell he'd coaxed a smile onto her lips, and maybe taken the edge off her annoyance at Bull's earlier evasion.

"It is, ma'am," Bull admitted, leaving the whole Christian name business high and dry. "Ain't you having none of these, Johnny?"

"There's lots," Johnny lied, having memorised the recipe to make enough batter for two people plus a few extra pancakes, not in any way accommodating Bull's appetite. He could always make some toast or something. It occurred to him that if Bull was going to stay for more than a day, he and Pat were going to talk over the grocery budget, and it wasn't a conversation he was looking forward to having. Things had been tight as it was. From the way Bull hummed in disbelief, Johnny'd been caught out. Johnny had been able to bullshit his way through the whole army, including wrangling an early discharge, but he'd never been able to get much of anything past Bull.

Pat finished and handed her empty plate to Johnny, kissing him on the cheek as she passed. Johnny leaned into it.

"Later, boys," she called over her shoulder on the way out the door. Her heels clicked on the wood of the hallway, and a moment later the front door shut.

"Mrs. Martin's still working?" Bull asked.

Johnny flipped the last two pancakes onto Pat's plate and plonked it down on the table, thudding into her chair a moment later. "She does the books at her uncle's shipping company."

Bull forked his remaining pancake onto Johnny's plate. "She ain't too..." he made a curving gesture with his hand.

"She says she'll stop working when she's damn good and ready," Johnny said, like he didn't feel a whole ocean of guilt about letting any of that happen, no matter how much they needed the money. "She ain't the kind of lady you argue with."

"Worked that out." Bull picked at the last half-pancake, drawing the process of eating out so that Johnny would have time to catch up. He was chewing carefully, too, and Johnny wondered if that blow that had his jaw swelling had loosened a few teeth.

 _Do I have to ask?_ Johnny wondered. He didn't know if he wanted Bull to volunteer what had happened to him, or if he just flat out didn't want to know at all. Either way, prying into Bull's pain seemed obscene, especially now when he was sitting in front of Johnny hunched over with one arm curled around his plate like he expected someone to snatch it away. Making fun in the messhall when they were all drinking was one thing, but Johnny would sooner murder a puppy than kick Bull when he was already down.

From the way Bull was hunching in as the silence drew out between them, he was expecting Johnny to ask, and he clearly didn't want to answer. Was it that he didn't want to dwell on his weakness, the way some of the guys wouldn't talk about the worst of the fights, or had he done something he was so ashamed of that he wouldn't admit it to his best friend? What had caused multiple men to decide to beat on Bull?

Bull had to know what Johnny was thinking, and he wouldn't talk and wouldn't meet his eyes, just kept using his fork to break the pancake into smaller and smaller pieces then chewing them as though that act required his entire attention. Like if he could keep dividing the pancake into infinity, he'd have the excuse of not answering the questions he was dreading.

Should Johnny be dreading them too? The question itched at his mind, well on its way to driving him bug fucking nuts, but he was afraid to even ask, let alone contemplate the answers. Impulse overtaking all else, Johnny reached across the table and put his hand over Bull's, he squeezed the back, where it wasn't bruised from the fight, and looked into Bull's eyes, even if they were still fixed on his plate.

"Bull," Johnny said as gently as he could. He wanted to make room for Bull to talk, if he wanted, but the word fell dead between them, and Bull didn't answer. They used to talk to each other as easy as breathing. There didn't used to be this chasm between them.

And Johnny had to wonder: what if Bull had changed? Or, worse, what if Johnny had never really known him, because Bull had been a different man when he was at war. That was true of so many of them. Hell, Johnny had been different over there, in some ways. They'd had to be, to survive with their souls still in their bodies. Those that had, anyway.

"How'd you get here?" Johnny asked, feeling like it was a safe place to start.

Bull ducked his head, grateful, and stopped eating, but neither looked up to meet Johnny's eyes nor pulled his hand away. "After I got away, I, uh, well I made a few calls. My landlady packed my ruck for me, and I picked it up 'fore they thought to look around my place. After that, I caught the first bus outta town. Ended up in Indianapolis. I was looking at the board, trying to work out what the hell I was gonna do, and I saw a bus for Columbus leaving in an hour. I thought... well I guess I thought at least I'd see you."

So he'd washed up at Johnny's door late at night with nothing but despair and pain in his heart, and Johnny had done his best to patch Bull's body back together, but now it seemed like there wasn't much he could do for his soul. Johnny wanted to promise Bull that he was welcome there as long as he liked, but he couldn't, not without talking to Pat first. And, if he were honest, not without knowing what had started that fight. He felt like a better man would have had enough unquestioning loyalty to offer a blank cheque, but he knew he couldn't afford the cost of cashing it. Problem was, Johnny had a wife to look after now, and a baby on the way.

"I'm glad you came," he said honestly, again proving himself a coward. "I missed seeing your ugly mug all the time, you know?"

Bull turned his hand over so that it rested palm to palm with Johnny's. The feel of rough skin that hadn't softened one bit since the war cut straight to Johnny's heart. "I know," Bull told him, "But it weren't right for me to just show up, an' expect you to take me in and feed me. Not when I'm..."

But Bull couldn't say it, and Johnny found he couldn't ask. It did not, it turned out, matter that it was his duty as a man and as a husband and as a soon-to-be father. Johnny couldn't ask if Bull didn't want to tell him.

"You can't go today," Johnny found himself saying, delaying the inevitable. "I gotta go to school soon, but you have to stay, all right? Promise me."

"All right," Bull said, and he smiled down at his plate, like Johnny had offered him a gift beyond accounting, like there was a special secret pride. "Can't believe you gone back to school," Bull added.

"You bet I did," Johnny answered, same as he had to Bill. "Ma didn't raise me to say no to a free education. I never planned to work those rail yards forever."

"Guess you didn't." Bull smiled again, and there was a wistfulness to it. He did not, Johnny realised, qualify for most GI Bill benefits, not with a bare eight grades of education under his belt. "You always were the clever one, always had something figured out."

He sounded proud enough of Johnny's army schemes that Johnny almost felt ashamed of them, not matter that he'd kept his buddies supplied and a little extra drinking money in his pockets. Johnny hadn't been that smart, or that clever back then, not smart enough to keep more of his boys alive, anyhow, and what else mattered past that? Bull had been better with the boys than Johnny ever had.

"I'll figure something out for you, too," Johnny found himself saying, and he felt better for it, even if the part of him that knew he had to ask screamed at him to smarten the fuck up. Too bad for it, Johnny decided. He owed Bull too much to question him now when he clearly didn't want to say.

Bull laughed and shook his head. He finished the pancake in two bites, saying, "I ain't thinking to stay long. Once I figure out where to go, I'll be out of your house."

"Promise you won't go today," Johnny said again, needing to make sure. He squeezed Bull's hand then pulled his own away. "Give me a chance, huh?"

Bull took a deep breath that seemed to lift his whole body then diminish it as he sighed. "Okay," he agreed, but his reluctance made that so conditional that Johnny worried that Bull would slip off into nowhere, disappear like it sounded like Joe Liebgott had done.

Johnny couldn't stand the thought of that. He wished he could afford to skip school and just hold onto Bull all day, anchor him in place until Johnny could work out a way to take care of him. He shovelled the last few bites of food into his mouth and stacked his plate on Bull's. "I'll leave you with the dishes, then, but get some rest, okay?"

Nodding shallowly, Bull stayed slumped against the table. He had to be hurting something awful.

He was still sitting at the table when Johnny got out of the shower, and Johnny began to worry less that Bull might take off, and wonder more if he should drag him to a doctor, no matter what the fees might be like. Johnny put his hand on Bull's shoulder, feeling the rough lines of that tank shell blast through his shirt. He meant it to be a quick pat of reassurance, but when Bull flinched at the touch, or maybe just the unexpectedness of it, Johnny held on, tightening his grip and shaking Bull's shoulder lightly. "Get some rest," he said again. "I'll be back maybe sixteen hundred, 'pending what bus I catch."

"You take the bus?" Bull asked, probably remembering the flashy car Johnny had talked about buying as soon as he got home.

Johnny snorted. Funny what got through to the man. "Ain't got there yet," Johnny said. His hand drifted to the back of Bull's neck, and he massaged the tense muscles there briefly, telling himself that wrapping Bull in another embrace wasn't welcome, and didn't make any sense anyway. "Okay," Johnny said, and pulled himself away towards the door. "I'll catch you later."

If Bull replied, Johnny didn't hear it.

Johnny didn't usually have a hard time focusing on school, even when he thought it was stupid or boring. The fact that his GI Bill funding relied on good grades was a motivator, as was the possibility of a scholarship. That day, though, he found that his attention kept drifting from the blackboard sketches of consumer purchasing power to the obvious bootprint marked in cuts and bruises on Bull's side.

You didn't get that kind of a beat down for no reason, Johnny thought, and if Bull had been rolled for the contents of his wallet, he wouldn't have left town over it. There weren't a hell of a lot of things that would run a white man out of an industry town in Michigan, and most of them weren't pretty. He literally could not picture Bull involved in any of them, not even though Johnny had seen the man covered in blood after he'd killed someone with his bare hands.

Johnny got a sharp elbow from the fellow next to him for drumming the eraser of his pencil on his desk, and curled his lip and snarled back like a dog. The fellow edged away, and Johnny tried to pull his attention back to what had turned into a lecture on the progress of the post-War real estate boom, which was something Johnny should care about. He made himself listen and take notes, and not think about the way Bull seemed burdened under so much grief that it'd taken on physical weight.

It was impossible not to wonder what he'd done, and then Johnny's mind was back in the same track as it'd been in before.

The brutal truth of it, Johnny decided as he walked to the last lecture of the day, was that he had to know. If Bull was somehow dangerous, as utterly unlikely as that seemed, Johnny couldn't leave him alone with Pat. The idea of casting a man he loved out seemed too much to stand, but Johnny had to be the man of the house, had to look after his own first.

Pat didn't usually get off work until 1700, so Johnny could have a talk with Bull as soon as he got back, find out what the story was. If it came down to it, Bull could be gone before Pat even saw him again. The heartlessness of that thought sat cold in Johnny's stomach, but he couldn't do anything else.

He didn't hear a single thing about how to manage payroll, and hoped that the textbook covered it. He hadn't made enough friends to ask to copy someone's notes.

At last, the day was over, and Johnny's feet led him back to the bus stop. He seemed to be working on instinct, as his brain churned away at the idea of how the hell you asked a buddy what crime he'd committed, against decency if not the law. Johnny supposed it would be best to just go at it straight out. He thought Bull would understand that. Hell, half of Bull's trouble seemed to come from how much he dreaded admitting to Johnny what'd gone wrong.

That Bull clearly expected Johnny to throw him out on his ear the second he found out only made his invented scenarios worse, and Johnny felt more like an utter shit for considering doing just that. Bull shouldn't have to brace himself for rejection under Johnny's roof. He should be able to come there when nowhere else was safe and find shelter.

For all that the day had seemed to drag itself out, the bus ride and walk home flew by, and then Johnny was at his own door without the least notion of what he would do or say. He'd led a platoon into battle, under fucking Peacock, no less, he could have one though conversation with a friend.

Johnny hung his hat by the door headed into the kitchen with a renewed resolve that was utterly derailed by the sight of Pat sitting at the table with Bull across from her.

Johnny could only see the back of Pat's head, but Bull wore the expression of a man who knew he was standing in the middle of a minefield and couldn't see a way out.

"You're home early," Johnny said, trying to work out what the fuck was going on.

Pat half turned to look back at him, tipping her head like she expected a kiss, so Johnny bent to press a quick peck to her lips.

"I told Uncle Ronny that my back was killing me," she explained, "and he said I could do up the invoices at home, if I wanted, so long as I dropped them off in the morning. I'll be in the office half days from now on, and he can hire an actual receptionist."

"Oh," Johnny said. That all sounded perfectly reasonable, but the timing still pinged him as suspicious. "He trying to pay you less?"

"He's trying," Pat said with that little razor smile he reserved for plotting to cut a male relative off at the balls. "We'll be fine."

"That's good." Johnny poured himself a coffee and dropped into the third chair. He looked at Bull, who was staying out of this, then at Pat who no longer appeared to be needling an explanation out of anyone. Which Johnny also found suspicious. "We'll have a bookkeeping ticket and half a business degree between us, and I still don't know how we'd work to squeeze another dime out of the budget."

"I..." Bull started to say, then fell silent again, glancing between them.

Pat seemed to take that as an invitation, and added like they'd all discussed this, "I was just saying to Denver that if he wants to stay here, I can probably find him something with Uncle Ronny, then he can chip in for food."

Bull and Johnny's eyes met, and Johnny was sure that his current surprised look matched Bull's perpetual confusion. Pat had been about ready to throw them both out not eight hours before. _Johnny_ had been nerving up to throw Bull out not more than eight minutes before, and from Bull's expression, he knew it.

"Yeah," Johnny said, drawing the word out. His brain felt like it was missing a cog, and kept spinning uselessly. He used to be smarter than this. "Or I can find something at C&O Rail, though it'd be after Bull's feeling better." He wasn't about to present someone to his old boss whose jaw was swollen up like a balloon and who moved like he'd fallen down three flights of stairs.

"Of course," Pat said easily.

Bull said nothing, even though Johnny knew he hated being talked over. He still looked immeasurably tired, or maybe it was just sad. Johnny remembered reaching across to him at breakfast, but that kind of physical comfort seemed odd in front of Pat. Though why should it? It wasn't like Bill Guarnere hadn't spent half his visit with his arm looped around Johnny's shoulders.

"Don't know that you'll want me to stay that long," Bull muttered, then sighed again. He glanced at Johnny before saying to Pat, "If you're sure I can't help with the cooking, Mrs. Martin, maybe I'll lie down for a spell before dinner."

"Of course," Pat said again, but she put her hand on Johnny's wrist to make sure he wouldn't go anywhere as Bull left.

Johnny waited for the bedroom door to click shut before he narrowed his eyes at Pat and asked pointedly, "So, how was your day? Anything interesting?"

Pat laughed at him, and the sound lifted Johnny's heart, even as he was putting on a show of being suspicious. "Checked your friend Denver's references."

Of course she had. Johnny didn't even have to ask how. Bull's address would have been in his book, and she knew where he'd worked. The rest would have been as easy as calling the directory in Michigan, putting all the long distance charges on her uncle's dime.

"I was going to ask him," Johnny protested, trying hard not to be defensive.

"Love," Pat said, reaching across to cup the side of his face. It may have started as a condescending pat on the cheek, but it quickly became a caress. Johnny leaned into the touch, turning his face to kiss her palm, again amazed at how soft her hands could be. "You're too good a friend, sometimes," Pat continued. "I wouldn't change it, but it's a fact. And if Denver needed to go, or God forbid we needed to call the police, I'd have done that before I asked it of you."

Johnny felt like crying at how much he loved her just then. She really was the smartest and bravest woman in Ohio, if not the whole country, and he told himself again he'd do anything in the world to keep her safe, if only she didn't keep taking care of herself before he got the chance. "So it's okay?" he asked, knowing that his tone had a note of a little boy pleading. "Bull's okay?"

Pat snorted. "Denver's had the ever loving hell beat out of him." She stroked her fingers through Johnny's hair, "but, yeah, he's okay." She frowned. "I wouldn't let him use the foreman at the foundry as a reference, if it comes to it. He is a very angry man."

"Thank you," Johnny said, putting his whole heart into the words. His heart sang at the idea that he didn't have to ask Bull anything, that it was all right, and he could just shelter his friend and not have to worry. He still didn't know what was the matter, but if it passed Pat's muster, he didn't need to. A trace of shame edged in at the idea that he'd abdicated his responsibility to his wife, but he was too relieved to put much stock in that. He felt his throat tighten as the day's worries and fears lifted off of him, and he took Pat's hand between his and kissed the knuckles then the back of it. "Thank you," he said again as he leaned across the table and kissed her mouth. Their lips lingered for a moment, and her nails dug into his scalp. Johnny loved how she smelled, this close, the mixture of soap, perfume and face powder, the passion of her kiss, the way she always closed her eyes, like she was savouring every moment. It made his heart hurt in a way that he'd never been able to describe, though he'd tried once, when he and Bill had been very, very drunk.

"You're welcome," Pat said as she pulled away, "Now get out of my kitchen and let me cook."

"Okay, okay," Johnny agreed, but sneaked another kiss before he got up. Pat swatted his ass on the way out the door.

Instead of going to his bedroom to study—though he wasn't sure what he ought to study, as the day's notes were a fragmentary mess—Johnny found himself lingering outside the door to Bull's room. He was pretty sure that if he pushed his way in, he wouldn't be entirely welcome, but he could picture Bull in bed, lying with his arms folded under his head like he always had in barracks, staring at the ceiling and not sleeping a wink.

Johnny could go in and lie down next to Bull, holding him like he had in all those shitty foxholes across Europe, until the steadiness and comfort of each other's bodies let them both rest. It had seemed so simple then, to hold someone and be held, and lean into the pure comfort of another's body. Sleeping wrapped in Bull's arms, then, had felt safe in a way that nothing else had, that nothing else possibly could. Johnny remembered the profoundness of the relief Bull had offered after that patrol in Haguenau, and wondered if he'd ever know that kind of trust again. Maybe it was childish to want it. He'd wept that night at the stupidity and loss of it all, but that wasn't the kind of vulnerability he could show around Pat.

He didn't think he could even tell her about it. He knew his letters home had been full of nonsense, all complaining about the army and offering whatever anecdotes about the boys he could dredge up, all his hopes and plans for home. Bill had talked more frankly to Frannie, who'd talked to Pat, and of course she was a smart lady who read the news, so she knew that it'd been bad. Johnny knew that his silence told as much as he could describe anyway. But he regretted the feeling that he was keeping secrets from her. He kept throwing himself into his new life, school, Pat, the baby, hoping that eventually the war would fade the same way his years of working nights at the rail yard all through high school had started to lose their edges. Then, it wouldn't be as much of a lie, just something he hadn't thought worth telling her.

Times like these, when seeing Bull again had brought it all back like it was happening now, Johnny understood what a fantasy that idea was.

He tapped softly on the door to the spare room, and when Bull grunted on the other side, he asked in a low voice, "Can I come in?"

"Your house," Bull said back, and Johnny frowned, but went in anyway.

Bull was lying on his back on top of the covers, one hand behind his head, the other holding a cigar. The curtains were drawn, but didn't cut much of the afternoon sun, only making the room warm with filtered orange light. Johnny didn't want to stand over Bull like a ghost of Christmas, so he settled on the floor next to the head of the bed, leaning back against the dresser. He loosened his tie and sighed. He should have thought to bring in a couple of beers.

Before Johnny could work up a way to ask Bull how he was, Bull said, "I don't know what Mrs. Martin is thinking of. I won't be troubling you for more than a few days. I can pay for my own food, though." There was guilt in that, but pride too. Bull wasn't the kind of man who'd let himself take advantage of his friends, no matter how much they might say they didn't mind it.

"Where will you go?" Johnny asked.

He was looking at his hands where they wrapped around his knees, and heard Bull sigh. "I ain't worked that out yet."

"Not back to Arkansas?" Johnny prodded gently. It would be better if staying worked out to be Bull's own idea.

"No," Bull said shortly, and Johnny thought that might be the end of it, but then he rolled on his side to face Johnny. "I went back after I shipped home, and it ain't changed. It was good to see Ma and the girls, but there ain't much I can see myself doing there. Even if, I could go back." He paused to breathe in smoke, before concluding, "Naw, I'll find something else."

Why Bull couldn't go back to his home state, was another question Johnny probably should ask, but had decided he was not going to. Instead, he said, "I dunno, Bull. If you're saying one place is as good as another, why not just stay in Columbus?"

"I'll think on it," Bull said, which Johnny took to mean that he'd work up a reason that all forty five states besides Michigan, Arkansas and Ohio had some better features.

Johnny weighed what could be seen as gilding the lily, then ventured, "Now that Pat's mentioned it, it'd make things easier around here if we had someone else working. I been doing a bit nights and weekends, but I don't like leaving Pat alone so much, and I need to study. Someone to split the rent on this place, pay a bit for groceries; well, it'd be a help."

Bull snorted, and Johnny knew how transparent all that was, no matter that it was true. If Johnny had gotten on his knees and begged Bull to stay, it'd have been about as subtle. Bull reached down and squeezed Johnny's shoulder. His knuckles were still swollen, but had scabbed over. When he spoke, his voice was thick and heavy. "You're a good man, Johnny."

"Always knew you were stupid," Johnny muttered, but he scooted a little closer to the bed so that the side of Bull's hand brushed his neck. He couldn't seem to make himself look in Bull's eyes, but if they could just sit here like this, gently touching, Johnny would call it victory.

He almost wished they were back in Europe and could hold each other again. Peace made everyone so distant. He hadn't noticed it before the war, before he'd known the constant company and contact of other men. Bull, in particular, he'd found hard to live without after the war. They'd been side by side for so long, that it'd taken Johnny months to shake the habit of turning and expecting him to be there.

"I've missed you, anyway," he said, surprising himself with the plain honesty of that.

Bull's fingers traced up the back of Johnny's neck to the edge of his hair. "Yeah," he said, but didn't elaborate.

Johnny felt his heart swell with an emotion he couldn't name, other than he wanted to curl into Bull's arms, and maybe kiss him. It wasn't just lust, but also the kind of compelling affection and loyalty that would make a man lay his life down without a second thought, but more than that too. As with all the other times, Johnny pushed the feeling aside as unwelcome and impossible.

"I should set the table," Johnny said. He shook free of Bull's hand and stood suddenly.

Maybe Bull was right, and him staying wasn't a good idea, but if something went wrong, Johnny didn't think it would be any fault of Bull's.

Bull was still quiet at dinner, but Johnny thought he'd lost a little of the hunted look. Pat talked to Johnny like nothing unusual was happening, and it let them all relax. Or let Bull relax, at least. Pat kept sliding Johnny looks that he didn't understand. He hoped that if she expected something of him, she'd outright tell him what it was sooner rather than later. He'd never seemed to have found a way to build the silent communication he'd shared with the boys.

Johnny found he kept looking across the table at Bull. His eyes didn't catch on the bruises as much any more, but on his familiar handsome features. It seemed so strange to have him sitting here in his house, across from Johnny and next to Pat, like one of them had stepped through the looking glass somehow.

After, Bull insisted on washing up, leaving Pat free to read her book, and exiling Johnny to his bedroom to attempt to study. At least they'd just passed a round of exams, because Johnny still couldn't seem to focus on a single word. His cowardice ate at him, and a quiet dread that he'd only realised when Bull had touched his neck. Wanting too much had always been a problem for Johnny.

Eventually, Johnny decided that the words and numbers on the page in front of him flat out weren't going to make sense, and he wandered back into the living room. Pat was sitting in the armchair, legs tucked up under her, utterly focused on the novel she was resting on her stomach. Bull was sprawled on the couch, smoking, eyes closed as he listened to a radio play turned down so low it was just a hum.

Johnny felt the same possessive pride rise in him when he looked at both of them, like a rooster with his hens: here they both are, under my roof, they picked me.

Bull opened his eyes and looked at Johnny, then reached over and clicked the radio off in the middle of the broadcast. It wasn't until he rolled off the couch and got up that Johnny realised he was freeing up the place to sit, and by then it was too late to wave him off. When Bill and Frannie had been there, Johnny had sat on the floor at Pat's feet, and the other couple had shared the couch. Now, Bull disappeared into his room with a murmured goodnight, leaving Johnny feeling like the room was too empty. He went and sat at Pat's feet anyway, letting her curl her legs over his shoulders. He kissed her calves, then pushed her skirt up enough to kiss her thigh where her stocking ended.

"Don't start anything you can't finish, buster," Pat said and batted his head with her book. Johnny was glad for the prevalence of paperbacks these days.

"We could be quiet," Johnny whispered, "be practice for when the kids are here."

"Hush, let me read," Pat told him, but she kept her legs looped around his neck, rubbing his chest with her heel.

"You used to read aloud to me," Johnny said, wanting to soak in her attention.

"I'm in the middle," Pat protested, "and it's just getting good."

"Okay, okay," Johnny muttered, and leaned his head back against the edge of the chair.

He could doze like this, he thought, let himself enjoy the warmth of her legs around him, and the domestic peace of the house, but when he closed his eyes he saw Bull lying alone in his room, somehow chased out just by Johnny being there. If this was going to be a home for him too, even just for a little while, Johnny wanted him to feel welcome, not edge away from anything that might be Johnny's like a scared cat.

Johnny wondered if Bull had felt at home anywhere since he'd left the army. It wasn't fair, he thought, for someone to be as kind and unselfish as Bull, to give so much for his country, to suffer so much, and then to come back and find nothing waiting for him. Johnny didn't know how he would have stood that return if he hadn't known Pat was here waiting.

"I'm a lucky man," he said, later, as he curled up around Pat in their bed.

"Go to sleep," Pat muttered, but her hand tightened over his.

* * *

"Didn't sleep?" Johnny asked the next morning, giving Bull a critical once over. The swelling along his jaw had gone down, leaving an ugly bruise matching the rings under his eyes.

Pat was already at work, but Johnny only had afternoon classes on Fridays, and was lingering in the kitchen while Bull did dishes.

Bull shrugged, turning back to drying the last of the plates. "Close my eyes, and then I can't stop myself remembering," he said eventually, "Then I start fretting 'bout things I can't change and borrowing all kinds of trouble."

Johnny knew that feeling all too well, though it had faded some since he'd gotten home. Still, sometimes he lay awake torn between memories of the war, and running and rerunning how much everything cost over in his head. He knew it drove Pat mad, but he couldn't seem to help it. He asked Bull what Pat always asked him, even if he never took her up on it, "Would it help to tell me?"

"Dunno." Bull let out a breath and leaned forward against the sink, his shoulders bunching up in a way that had to hurt with all the bruises. Johnny wished he would turn so that they could look each other in the eye. "Seems like I put enough on you already," Bull said. "More than enough."

Johnny knew that feeling too, and tried to think how to say that there wasn't much on Earth that he wouldn't do for Bull, but in a way that wouldn't spook him. "Christ," he muttered, "when I get sick of you, I'll tell you."

"Ha." Bull still didn't turn. "I guess I got to thinking about how you ain't asked about..." he left the space of the last few days a blank, but he didn't have to specify. "Figured maybe you didn't want to know, and I'd be putting you out of your way by jawing on about it."

"Fuck," Johnny muttered, and considered banging his head against the table before dismissing it as melodramatic. "I know you catch on slow sometimes, but lemme say it clear for you, okay? I won't pry if you wanna keep your business to yourself, but there ain't nothing you can't tell me. Okay? Christ. How long we been friends?"

"Long while," Bull acknowledged. He put the frying pan away, handling it as delicately as if it were bone china, and closed the cupboard so lightly Johnny couldn't hear the latch click, then turned and came to sit at the table. The chair creaked under his weight as he slumped into it. "I don't know, Johnny. Maybe the whole thing's the kind of mess that talking about only makes worse."

"Sounds like keeping it to yourself don't make it better," Johnny countered, though he was still wondering if he wanted to know. Pat had said it was all right, or at least not dangerous, but... "Just get it over with."

"Fine." Bull said, then took a breath and looked past Johnny to some point in Michigan. "Hard to know where to start, I guess. Seems like the worst part of all of it is I got Pauly that job, and that's why he was there at all." He shook his head slightly, seeming to know that didn't make sense to anyone but himself, and started again. "Paul's my ma's sister's kid. She didn't want him fighting, so I sorted it out so that he could take my place at the foundry when I enlisted. He worked there all through the war, and when I got back and was looking for work, I ended up back there, too. Don't know if I liked it too much any more, but it was something."

Johnny stayed silent, not wanting to stop Bull now that he'd got him going, but at the same time he wondered if Bull had put any thought into what he did want.

"Never cared much for Pauly, never mind he was kin," Bull continued, "and he was sore that he'd missed out on the fighting, even though he coulda gone if he wanted to, so he'd get on me about that, then want to booze up and talk about the trouble we used to get up to back home. He came over to mine that night without asking. Tuesday, and he was half cut already, and I wasn't expecting anyone to just..." Bull gestured helplessly, then tucked his hands under his armpits and hunched in.

"Course you weren't," Johnny said, trying to sound sympathetic even though he didn't have the faintest clue what Bull was talking about. Had he snapped and knocked his cousin's head in?

Again, Bull seemed to decide he'd gotten onto the wrong track, and folded back again. "There was a kid I liked at the foundry. Worked the same section as me. Had been in the Pacific, bunch of shitty islands, he said, no flamingos. He didn't have much family around, neither, and we got to spending time together after work, then he started to spend the night over."

Bull's eyes met Johnny's, and he watched him carefully, waiting for Johnny to pick up the penny he'd dropped. "You mean?" Johnny asked, even though it was a fucking stupid thing to say.

"I mean he and I were screwing," Bull said flatly before rushing forward with the rest of the ugly story, like he was trying to cover up the heart of it. "An' I guess Pauly heard us at it that night, 'cause he went and rounded up a bunch of his buddies, and they were all good and liquored up by the next morning."

Johnny put his hand over his mouth, feeling sick. It was too easy to picture, especially already having seen the marks on Bull's body. "Shit," he muttered, and tried not to see it, tried to think of anything else besides how much that must have hurt.

"Pretty sure I broke Pauly's jaw, anyhow," Bull said, obviously taking some satisfaction in that. "It was right after he said we weren't kin no more, though, so I reckon he wrote his ma about it, and she'll have told my ma." He was talking steadily, as if it didn't matter, but Johnny had heard him earlier about not being able to go home, saying he hadn't known where else to go but here.

"I'm sorry." Johnny couldn't tell if he felt like crying or hitting someone more. Probably the latter, he thought, but there was no one here to hit. He missed that about the war, sometimes, how violence could be of use.

"Yeah, me too," Bull said heavily. "Ain't much to do about it now." He took a breath and reached across the table to touch Johnny's wrist, focusing his attention before pulling back. "I'd understand if you didn't want me to stay here, now as you know."

"Know?" Johnny's mind circled back, and realised what the potential problem was. He shook his head. "Way I see it, that ain't my business."

"Didn't think it was Pauly's business, neither," Bull said. He didn't seem to believe that Johnny didn't care. Well, why should he? He'd just had his own cousin lead a gang to beat him half to death. Seemed like every other day the papers printed lurid stories of queers dead in parks or hotel rooms, every one implying that they'd had it coming.

Johnny shook his head again. "Pauly's a rat-fucking son of a bitch, and I hope you broke more than his jaw," he said, and when Bull continued to watch him warily, he added, "and I ain't one to throw stones on that score, anyhow."

Bull scooted his chair back, like he thought that Johnny was having him on, or maybe that he was laying some kind of trap. "You ain't never."

"No, I ain't," Johnny admitted. "I been with Pat since we were sixteen, but I thought about it. Maybe I woulda, if I hadn't been married." If he hadn't spent the war thinking, erroneously, it turned out, that Bull wasn't like him. An odd bit of scripture about how if a man committed adultery in his heart, he may have well have done it in truth drifted into his mind, but he couldn't quite pin it down. He'd never been much for listening in church.

"Well ain't that something," Bull said, shaking his head. He settled back down against the table. "Shit, Johnny, I been scared out of my wits what you'd do if you found out. I couldn't have..."

"Hey, shut up," Johnny snapped. He didn't want to think about any of that, or what cutting Bull's ties to Easy would have done to him. "It's not gonna happen. You can stay here until you get sick of us, all right?"

"Okay," Bull agreed, but he looked away, unable to hold Johnny's gaze. Johnny didn't know if he was embarrassed by Johnny's offer, or still ashamed of what he'd admitted.

For the first time, it occurred to Johnny to wonder who had been screwing who, and how they'd made enough noise to be heard through a door. It was a dangerous set of images, and Johnny tried to push it away by asking, "What happened to your friend?"

"Oh, he was all right," Bull told him. "Pauly never figured out who I was with, just that it weren't a lady."

At least Bull didn't sound too broken up about having left his lover in another state, but that was also a dangerous turn of thought for Johnny. Almost everything seemed to be now. When there hadn't been any chance that Bull might reciprocate, it was easy to drift so close that their lives knotted around each other in an inseparable snarl. Now, Johnny had to wonder if each offer he made was out of friendship or sex.

He was going to drive himself nuts if he kept thinking like this. He was a married man, anyhow, and nothing with Bull was ever going to lead to anything any more than Johnny would have gone to all those cathouses with Bill back in France.

It wasn't like Bull had indicated that he had any carnal interest in Johnny anyway. Even if Johnny were free, which he was not, making a move on a friend who'd just been betrayed and displaced would be pretty shitty of him.

It seemed like he'd been quiet for too long, as Bull sighed and pushed himself to his feet. "That was actually the worst part," he said, looking down at Johnny. "Worse than me having gotten Pauly that job. My friend saw me getting that beating, and... and he just kept walking on by. Not as I can say I blame him, what could he have done? But... I guess that one'll take a while to shake."

He'd spat it out like a confession, and before Johnny could say anything—though what he might say to that, he had no idea—Bull walked out of the kitchen and closed the door of his room behind him, leaving Johnny to wonder if asking Bull to talk hadn't done more harm than good. Certainly, he didn't seem more at peace with anything, and now Johnny had murder in his heart, even if he knew he there was no way to act on it, and a growing unease deep in his gut. He really wanted to hit someone. Almost more worryingly, he wanted to crawl into Bull's lap and wrap his arms around his neck and never let go.

Christ, Johnny was a mess, and he still had to go to school. He didn't have much hope that taking his books to the library and reading them over there would do him much good, but it seemed marginally more likely to work than trying to read them here, with Bull shut in his room doing whatever he was doing.

Johnny wished there was some way to know if Bull was going to be all right, or if the whole thing had wounded him too deeply to recover from. He couldn't imagine what losing his job, his place and his lover all in one go like that would feel like, on top of everything the war had done to them. He decided that he had to make extra sure that Bull knew he was welcome in Johnny's home. They'd make an odd sort of family, the three of them, and a fourth on the way, but stranger combinations must have washed up over the years,

Besides, Johnny hadn't been lying when he'd said that having Bull around would be helpful. Maybe he could even help Johnny and Pat with the baby, when it came to that. Johnny didn't have a heck of a lot of blood relations he was still on speaking terms with, and the whole concept of babies worried him. Bull had talked about looking after little cousins, in a pinch when none of the girls were around, and probably had some idea how one went about the whole thing.

Johnny realised about when he got to Ohio State that he was already thinking as if Bull staying there over the long haul was a done deal.

* * *

It still felt strange to come home on a weekday and find Pat already there. Stranger still to find her sitting in the living room with her feet up on the couch, an ignored accounts book in her lap, while she listened to Bull giving a bowdlerised account of the Thanksgiving they'd spent in Mourmelon-le-Grande. Bull was mending the trousers he'd been wearing when he'd arrived, and talking with the even good humour he used to tell those folksy farm stories to replacements. He hadn't yet gotten to the bit about George Luz and the cake, which Johnny assumed was going to be the punch line.

Johnny kissed Pat, and brushed his hand over Bull's shoulder on the way by. They both smiled at him, and Johnny felt his heart warm, again thinking that this was how things ought to be. He went to read over his notes, but left the bedroom door open so that he could hear the murmur of their voices, as comfortable as a favourite song on the radio.

If Bull and Pat were getting along so well, it only made it more likely that Bull would stay. Then, presumably, Johnny could keep torturing himself with all the things he couldn't have.

* * *

Johnny had an occasional weekend job working for a buddy who roofed houses, and he got up early on Saturday to head to that. Pat was sleeping in, but Bull fussed around the kitchen cooking for both of them. "I'm trying to learn the house building business," Johnny explained over eggs and toast. "There's nothing but building now that the war's done."

"Do you like it?" Bull asked, and Johnny actually thought about the answer instead of shrugging it off with a wisecrack.

"Guess I do," he said. "I like how all the pieces fit together, getting stuff from all different places, making sure it all works out. And it's outside, mostly. Which is better this time of year." January had been a trial, even if it had mostly been working on fabricating supplies for the building season.

"Used to like the foundry," Bull said, answering a question Johnny had wanted to ask, but hadn't. "It was steady work, and the machines were interesting, though it smelled something awful. But going back after four years and all that." He shook his head and poured them both more coffee before saying, "It didn't feel right. Felt like I was trying to... I dunno. Didn't feel right, anyhow."

Johnny thought he knew what Bull was groping for, how seeing something familiar when it felt like the entire world should have changed gave a fellow a seasick feeling, like he could feel the earth spinning all of a sudden. "Lots of work in Columbus," he said. "You can try anything, like a fresh start."

Bull looked dubious at that, and Johnny couldn't tell if it was at the idea that he'd have his pick of jobs, or that anything could feel fresh and new, now. But he tried to put a good face on it, and said, "I might like something outside. Be a change."

"We'll find you something on Monday," Johnny promised, though he wasn't sure with what time. "Give your kisser a couple more days to heal up."

"Sure," Bull said, and Johnny wished he could hear more enthusiasm in his voice. The man had every right to be a little down, but Johnny had to wonder how long it would be before he needed to worry about Bull. He didn't think it was entirely new, this black mood, or caused by the fight.

He wished he knew what to do to fix it. Giving Bull time seemed like the soundest idea, but Johnny had never been a patient man.

A cold rain out of the north set in that afternoon, and by the time Johnny got home he was wet through and shivering so hard his teeth rattled. He kicked his work boots off and trudged towards the shower, not caring who saw as he stripped out of his sodden clothes. The hot water tank wasn't up to more than ten minutes, and Johnny was still freezing by the time he got out. He tried not to think of all those frozen marches, and how he'd have cut a man's throat for a hot shower then, but the cold kept bringing it back.

"Shouldn't be up on a roof in this weather," Pat muttered and shoved a mug of coffee into his hands when he came out. He didn't have anything on past the towel wrapped around his waist, and he knew that his skin was still blotched pink and grey from the cold. The coffee felt like heaven, but he had to hold it with both hands to keep from splashing it out of the cup.

"'M okay," Johnny muttered, though he didn't think he convinced either Pat or Bull, who was leaning in the doorway to the kitchen, frowning at him.

Johnny downed the coffee, which was scalding, but the warmth flushing through his system made it worth the burnt tongue, and then he didn't have to hold the cup any more. Pat was rubbing up and down his arms, her smooth hands sliding over his goosebumps. He didn't know if it was making him any warmer, but it felt great.

"Wish I had time to warm you up," she whispered into his ear. Leaning in so close, her belly pressed against his. Johnny put his hand on the small of Pat's back to steady her, and tipped his head to kiss her cheek.

"How come you don't?" he asked. They hadn't made love since Bull had moved in, which was something they were going to have to figure out.

"Because I'm about to burn dinner," Pat answered, and pulled away.

Whatever was in the oven did smell like it was getting pretty hot. Johnny sighed and turned towards his bedroom. Pat's efforts hadn't really touched the cold that seemed to have settled into his bones, and he was still shivering.

"Shoulda had a bath, not a shower," Bull commented.

Johnny hadn't started moving yet. He felt like the cold had eaten into his brain. "Thought of that about half way through the shower," he admitted.

"Here." Before Johnny knew what Bull was doing, he'd pulled his sweater off and was bundling it up to shove over Johnny's wet hair. It was heavy, scratchy red wool, and hung on Johnny like a dress, but the warmth it carried from Bull's skin seemed to soak into Johnny.

Johnny wrapped his arms around himself, the ends of the sleeves hanging off his hands. "Thanks," he said, and looked over Bull who was down to his undershirt. The bruises on his arms were starting to yellow. Johnny still felt sick every time he saw them, but he couldn't seem to look away, either.

"Here," Bull said again, and stepped in, wrapping his arms around Johnny and rubbing his hands up and down Johnny's back with the same briskness Pat had used on his arms. Johnny stood where he was, and pressed his nose into Bull's shoulder. He smelled clean, the same soap Pat and Johnny used, and a light musk of perspiration, so different from the times Bull had held him to keep him warm in the field, when they'd both reeked so bad it was hard to stand. The cigar smoke was familiar, at least, and in other ways it hadn't changed. The way Bull was trying to look after him was the same.

Bull had stopped rubbing his back and was massaging the back of Johnny's neck, holding his face against his chest. It felt so good Johnny could melt into the floor right there.

Johnny suddenly felt far too aware that he was wearing a towel and a borrowed sweater, and nothing else. He pulled away. "Pat'll probably expect me to have some pants on for dinner," he said, and smiled up at Bull, who looked slightly startled, like he hadn't quite realised where they were.

"You bet I will!" Pat called from the kitchen.

That got them both moving, but Johnny found that when he changed into dry jeans and a pullover shirt, he still layered Bull's sweater over top, rolling the sleeves up into bundles over his forearms. He knew he should give it back, but it smelled like Bull, and it was so damn warm.

"Ma made that for me," Bull said when Johnny wore it to the table. "When I first moved north; said I'd need it."

Pat leaned across the table and fingered a seam. "You've had to patch it up a few times since, huh?"

Bull nodded. His eyes crinkled as he looked at Johnny in the sweater, but then his mouth turned down. "Don't know how long it'll hold up," he said. "Half of it's darning already."

Johnny wanted to look at Pat and make sure she understood not to mention the possibility of Mrs. Randleman making another, but didn't want Bull to see him do it. She didn't anyway, just changed the topic to how nice it was of Bull to buy groceries. Johnny sighed and shivered under the sweater, despite the fact that it wasn't cold any more.

When he went to bed, Johnny folded the sweater as though it were the flag and put it on Bull's dresser. Bull nodded, but didn't say anything.

The rain continued throughout the next day, cutting through all of Johnny's raingear and making him think that maybe at twenty three he was getting too old for this, and that he'd just about had enough of Ohio's spring weather. He knew he should study after dinner, but he couldn't work up the energy to do more than lie on the couch and listen to Pat reading aloud.

She had a book of short stories, which Johnny would have found rather sordid if not for the gusto with which Pat read them, but even so, her voice kept fading as he drifted in and out of sleep. Bull was sitting on the floor with his back to the window, rewiring the lamp Johnny had been meaning to fix since they'd moved in, and the click of his tools blended with Pat's voice.

He came to himself again when Pat groaned and stretched, breaking the sleepy harmony of the room. "Jeeze, my feet are killing me," she muttered. "I didn't even walk that much, just to church and back, but..."

"Then you made dinner, and woulda done all the ironing," Bull pointed out. He screwed a lightbulb into the lamp and plugged it in, illuminating his corner of the room.

"Should give you a foot rub," Johnny said sleepily. If he rolled off the side of the couch, he could just crawl over to the chair, and wouldn't even have to get up. The rolling over part seemed like a lot of work, though.

"I can see you're just jumping right to that," Pat said, smiling over at him. "Always my hero."

"Yup," Johnny agreed. He twitched sideways, then fell back onto the couch. "Just..."

"You should go to bed." Bull had more laughter than disapproval in his voice, for all that he was right. "I'll rub the lady's feet."

"Perfect," Johnny said, subsiding into the couch and pulling the blanket up to his chin. "Now who's your hero, Patty?"

Pat was giving him a sideways look though, and it took Johnny a moment to catch on that a fellow letting another man touch his wife's ankles wasn't entirely regular. Johnny raised his eyebrows in return, and she shrugged slightly, and tipped her head to one side, seeming to say that she didn't care if he didn't.

Bull was looking between them, picking up on the tension about the same moment Johnny had. He stayed quiet until Pat kicked off her slippers and held her feet out towards him, then crawled across the floor and sat cross-legged in front of her chair, resting one of her feet on his knee and taking the other in both hands. Pat's skirt fell back, revealing her calf up to the knee. Johnny was suddenly very aware that she wasn't wearing stockings.

When Bull started to press his thumbs into the arch of her foot, Pat let her head fall back against the chair and moaned softly. "That's it," she said. "You've been replaced, Johnny."

Johnny laughed along with her, and relaxed again, snuggling down into the couch. But instead of drifting off again, his eyes stayed open and fixed on the way Bull's huge hands enveloped Pat's feet, how softly he touched her ankles, the way his fingers worked between each of her delicate toes, and how Pat's feet curled in response. He liked watching them together. They were good for each other. It was good to have Bull there to help look after things.

* * *

Johnny took Bull down to the C&O railroad yards first thing the next morning. He'd still clearly had a rough go of it, but his face looked less dire than it had the week before, and he wasn't moving so stiffly. With a freshly pressed suit and a new hat, Johnny thought Bull looked fresh, fit and ready to work.

Still, the first thing the foreman asked was if Bull usually got in fights.

"No, sir," Bull replied confidently, and Johnny nodded.

Mr. Wilson looked between them. He'd been the one to hire Johnny all those years ago, and had said he'd take him back evenings or nights, if Johnny thought he could swing that and a more than full course load at the same time. Wilson had been with the railroad since he was fourteen, he said, and seemed to think it was a reasonable career for Johnny, even as Johnny was edging out the door to find something else.

"I only have a night shift open," Wilson said now. "But something else might open in a few months, if you do well."

Bull shifted uneasily, but then said, "I'd be pleased to take anything you have to offer, Mr. Wilson."

He'd hardly see the sun, Johnny thought, but he'd done his share of nights in the yards, and there could be a solace to it. It would be outside, at least, and there was certainly a solace to the pay. "Guess I won't see too much of you, huh?" he said.

"Denver's staying with you, Johnny?"

Johnny's brows drew together. He'd already mentioned that. "He is for now, sir."

Wilson smiled, a lop-sided edge of teeth making it more of a leer. "Well, if you trust him at home alone with that pretty wife of yours all day, I suppose I can see my way to trusting him with my rail stock five nights a week."

Johnny made himself smile back, and snapped off a "Yes, sir" like he was still in the damn army.

Wilson and Bull worked out the details, and Bull stopped in with the secretary to set up his payroll, while Johnny stood outside and smoked and waited. He didn't like the slant Wilson had put on the whole thing. There was no danger from Bull. Sure, he seemed to like women as well as men, or had when they'd been on leave in London, but the very idea that Johnny would think that Bull and Pat could betray him, that just didn't track.

Johnny ground his smoke out on the bricks and pushed off the wall just as Bull came out.

"Don't know if I care for Mr. Wilson," Bull said when they were a block away from the yards.

"You won't see him much," Johnny promised, but the leering smile stuck with him, and he found his fists clenching. He thought of Bull rubbing Pat's feet, and the noises she made, and how he hadn't minded watching that at all.

But Bull wouldn't, and Pat wouldn't, and worst of it Johnny had spent four years in the army proving to himself that he wouldn't either.

* * *

Bull started at the rail yard that night, and the week quickly fell into a pattern of a few words in the kitchen as Bull came in to go to bed just as Pat was leaving for her morning at work, Johnny drinking coffee while Bull yawned and told him about the night, and then an early meal and evenings spent all three of them together after Johnny got back from school, and before Bull left for work.

Wednesday marked a week since Bull's arrival, and Johnny couldn't tell if that felt like a long time or not. He didn't, when he thought of it, think that it felt any different than life with just Pat had, at least not in the way that Johnny felt like it ought to. Pat didn't mind someone else to help around the house, or to keep her company during the afternoons she spent at home. They certainly couldn't complain about the money Bull would be bringing in. And seeing him and Pat sitting together when he came home from school, hearing their voices as he studied, feeling Bull's hand on his shoulder when they passed in the hall, it felt nice.

Bull didn't mention looking for somewhere else to stay, so Johnny didn't either. Pat talked about how the baby would be in their room for the first few months anyway.

On Thursday evening, the phone rang. Johnny'd been in the chair, and went over to the box on the wall. He'd never been sure if the three bucks a month was worth the line, but they used it for work sometimes, and Pat liked to talk to her ma. The first thing Johnny heard was the hiss and roar of a long distance connection, the second thing was Bill Guarnere hollering to be heard above it.

"Bill?" Johnny demanded, and both Bull and Pat's heads came around.

"Making this quick, 'cause it's costing me," Bill snapped. "You got the Bull there?"

"Why you asking?" Had some of Bull's trouble followed him? But why to Philly not Columbus?

"So you do have him! I knew it." Bill said something to Frannie that Johnny didn't catch. The connection sounded like it was going over Niagara falls in a barrel.

"Why you asking?" Johnny said again, not giving an inch.

"His Ma's looking for him. Had Frannie's address, and wrote to say he's missing, and she's worried."

Johnny didn't want to lie to Bill, but he didn't want to say anything more than he had to about Bull's situation either. Anything he asked would give a nosy bastard like Bill a pretty good hint as to what was going on.

"Ya still there?" Bill demanded.

"I'm here," Johnny was clutching the receiver in both hands and feeling like the peace he'd spent a week building was pouring down the telephone wire. "Listen, Bill, Bull's fine. You don't gotta worry about him, okay?" Johnny glanced over at where Bull was sitting bolt upright on the end of the couch, looking tense as if he'd run at the snap of a twig. Bull shook his head. "He don't want no one to know where he is."

"You in trouble?" Bill yelled, and Johnny could just picture him ready to get on a train to Columbus, cane raised to clobber anyone that was bothering Johnny or Bull.

"We're fine," Johnny promised him. "I'll tell Bull about the letter."

They yelled goodbyes at each other, and Johnny put the receiver back on the hook and leaned against the wall, his ears ringing from the strain of trying to pick signal out of noise. He'd never made much of a radioman.

"Sounds like your ma's looking for you," Johnny said when he got his thoughts together.

"Worked that out," Bull answered. He'd relaxed a little but still looked spooked. It was a hard thing to curse a man's mother, but Johnny couldn't say he thought the best of Mrs. Randleman for undoing a week's work with a single letter.

"Bill says hello," Johnny added.

"We heard the whole thing, love," Pat told him. She was sitting at the far end of the couch attempting to knit a sweater for the baby, but it looked like a tangle to Johnny. Her feet were up, and had been pressed against Bull's thigh, but now she sat straight same as he did.

Johnny shook his head and went to crouch on the floor in front of Bull. "Listen," he said, "If you want to write her, just give the letter to one of the engineers or oilmen. They can post it from any city you like. Easy."

Bull looked at Pat, then back at Johnny and shook his head. "I can't," he said, almost whimpering, his voice was so low. "Johnny."

"All right, all right," Johnny said, and held up his hands in surrender. "I said I'd pass it on, and I did. I'll leave it to you."

"I gotta get ready for work," Bull said, pushing to his feet, even though he didn't need to leave for half an hour.

Johnny took his place on the couch, still warm from Bull's body, and pulled Pat's feet into his lap. "Coulda gone better," he muttered.

Pat sighed and scooted forward so that her legs draped over his thighs and her head lay flat on the couch. The knitting fell to the floor. He rubbed up and down her legs. She took his hand and put it on her stomach, and they sat for a moment feeling the baby kick. Johnny was still having trouble imagining what the baby was going to be like, and what it would mean to be entirely responsible for a whole human being. He supposed it would be a bit like being a platoon sergeant, but more tightly focused and with less control. The intensity of feeling that slammed closed around his heart every time he so much as thought about the little person growing inside Pat was enough to stagger him, and he couldn't imagine what it would feel like to hold him or her in his hands.

Softly, so that there was no possible way that Bull could hear in his room, Johnny asked, "If our kid grows up like Bull,"—like me, he didn't say—"you... you wouldn't want to throw him out, would you?"

Pat kicked her heel against Johnny's thigh hard enough to make him yelp. "Don't be stupid," she snapped, but she was chewing her lip, thinking. "It'd be sad, though, wouldn't it? How much harder his life'd be?"

Johnny couldn't argue with that. "Wonder what Bull's ma wants," he said after a while.

"Dunno." Pat shook her head. "I've been trying to work that one out, but..."

"He deserves a break." Johnny's voice had risen too high, and he made himself settle down. His was squeezing Pat's hand hard. He took a breath. "He just... I know I rag on him for being a hick, but he's a good man, Pat. I wouldn't have made it without him, not after Bill got hit. I never told you how bad I fell apart, crying and carrying on, and he..." Johnny couldn't finish, couldn't say how by just being there, Bull had made the difference between Johnny getting through the war with his soul more or less in his body, and Johnny cracking up like Buck Compton. "He deserves a break."

"You don't have to convince me, love. I like him too," Pat said, and she drew Johnny's hand up to her mouth and kissed the knuckles. "You're a good friend to him, but I think whatever's going on with Denver's family, that's for him to work out."

Johnny let his head fall back against the wall behind the couch, staring up at the stucco ceiling. "Yeah."

They were still sitting there like that when Bull left his room to go to work.

* * *

The next couple days, Johnny tried to bring home little things that he saw that Bull might like: a packet of cigars the first time, some salt toffees on Friday. It felt pathetically small in the face of everything Bull was going through, but Johnny couldn't think what else to do. At least the gifts made Bull smile at him.

Bull worked the weekend, but had Monday and Tuesday nights off. "Don't rightly know when I'm meant to sleep," Bull said tiredly on Monday. He was lying on the couch having gotten back from work a few hours before, but clearly dithering on sleeping the day away.

"I don't think I slept at all," Johnny told him as he tried to find a pen that still had ink in the well, "But I was eighteen."

"That seems like a long time ago."

"Hey, you're the old man, not me," Johnny answered. "I can still burn my candle at both ends and have plenty to spare."

Bull snorted. "Yeah, you go get 'em, champ. Show those numbers how it's done."

Johnny threw another busted pen at Bull, only for Bull to bat it out of the air. "See if I don't," Johnny said, which wasn't a great come back, but the truth was that working twenty-hour weekends on top of trying to study, on top of worrying about Bull and Pat and the baby was running him thin at the edges. He shoved a couple pencils in his book bag and stood. "You know when I'll be back."

"Think I got it worked out by now," Bull told him. He was flipping the pen over his knuckles, watching it with a fascination accessible only to small children, the exhausted, and the very drunk.

Johnny shook his head. What a sorry, tired, washed up lot they were, the whole household of them. Still, the only part of it he'd trade away was that sad look Bull still got in his eyes. And the bills.

* * *

Johnny's late afternoon class was cancelled. The note on the door said the professor was sick, but Johnny suspected from his often blurry complexion on Mondays that it was nothing a little hair of the dog wouldn't set to rights. Regardless, it set Johnny on his way home two hours early, and he couldn't find that he regretted that.

The weather had see-sawed its way back to thinking it was coming on summer again, and the sun would be warming the back of the house. Johnny thought he might put the kitchen chairs out in his postage stamp backyard, or even just lie on the stubbly spring grass, and pretend he was back in Zell-am-See. Maybe they could play some cards after dinner, and spend some time together, the three of them.

He also wondered if maybe Bull might like to go out to the pictures or something, and he and Pat could have an evening together just on their own. He kept meaning to take advantage of Bull's night shifts, but by the time he was out of the house, Johnny usually just wanted to go to sleep, and Pat usually _was_ asleep.

But now Johnny had the whole afternoon free, and he spent the bus ride back paging through imagined possibilities like a kid with a Sears Roebuck wish book.

Instead of walking in on Pat working on her accounts books, and Bull either napping or tinkering with something Johnny hadn't even thought to fix, Johnny found the house silent and both bedroom doors closed.

Johnny stood between them, looking from one to the other, and trying to work out what the heck was going on. Pat had been getting tired lately, maybe they'd both decided to have a nap. Except that didn't explain the hurried rustling and thumps he now heard behind Bull's door, like someone was going through drawers.

"Bull?" Johnny asked softly. He raised his hand to knock on the door, but it was off the latch and pushed open at his touch.

The place looked like it'd been hit by a hurricane, drawers pulled open, and clothes scattered over the bed. Johnny would have thought someone had rolled the place, except that Bull was standing in the middle of it, holding his barracks bag

He turned to Johnny with an expression of wide-eyed horror, which he tried to still into a mask of army neutrality, before his mouth tightened and his lip started to tremble. "Oh. Shit," was all he said, and even that was covered by the thud of the ruck hitting the floor.

Johnny, confronted by a situation he didn't understand, felt anger rising. "What the fuck are you doing?"

Bull flinched. "I'm sorry, Johnny."

"Bull!" Johnny snapped, then tried to tell himself that yelling wasn't going to get him any answer, even though he wanted to grab Bull by the collar and shake him for not conforming to Johnny's expectations for the day. "Are you leaving?" was the best he could come up with.

"I..." Bull looked around at his scattered possessions and the bag next to his feet and shrugged. He clearly was.

"Well don't!" Johnny snapped. His brain was finally catching up to what was going on, which was tricky because he didn't know shit about what was going on, but this was like realising you were in the middle of a firefight, all of a sudden, the first thing you had to do was figure out where the enemy was. If everyone jumped up and went running around like idiots, they'd all get shot before they knew the first thing. He ran through the possibilities of why Bull might be apologising while packing, and asked in what he thought was going to be a reasonably steady voice, but came out like cold steel, "Is Pat hurt?"

Bull froze in place, seemingly as chilled by the very idea as Johnny was. "Course not. Pat's fine. The baby's fine."

That cut off Johnny's second possibility. Bull was clearly physically okay, if badly shaken, which took out the third. He felt himself relax a little, before another thought occurred to him. "Is someone coming after you? Your cousin?"

"No," Bull said shortly. His cheeks were flushing dark with what Johnny was quickly realising was shame.

Johnny sighed and folded his arms, glaring up at Bull. "Okay, I ain't playing twenty questions no more. You're just going to have to tell me why the fuck you're leaving all of a sudden." Very suddenly, actually. If Bull had finished packing at the rate he'd been going, he'd have been gone hours before Johnny would've normally been back from school. "Were you even going to say goodbye?"

"Shit, Johnny, I..." Bull rubbed his hand over his mouth. "I didn't think I could stand to look you in the eye. I never been so ashamed, not in my whole life."

Wilson at C&O's leering look flashed in front of Johnny's eyes, and the way Pat had moaned when Bull rubbed her feet, and all the times he'd come in and they'd been sitting close. "Jesus," Johnny hissed. "You been here for _two weeks_!"

Half of him wanted to know the details: the how, the why, the what they'd done. Most of him wanted to blot the whole thing out of his mind. Pat couldn't have done that to Johnny, not after so long. Problem was, he knew Bull, knew he wouldn't have made her do anything she didn't want, which meant she wanted Bull.

"Shit, shit, shit," Johnny muttered and told himself that he wasn't going to cry, not right there in front of Bull. He gritted his teeth and lifted his chin. He took a deep breath and steadied himself, squaring his shoulders and letting the certainty of the airborne infantry steel him, even if it felt like he was faking it. "Okay," he said. "Okay. We're going to... Okay."

He looked at Bull and could see how pathetic his attempts to pull himself together must look. It was all right there, reflected in the shame and misery in Bull's expression. Bull had been about to leave the only home he had, probably the job he hadn't even been paid for yet, because he couldn't stand that he'd hurt Johnny. There was something to that, and Johnny held onto it. Bull looked like he was going to try apologising again, but Johnny held up his hand to shut him up.

"Pat in our room?" he asked.

"Johnny," Bull said, an edge of warning in his voice.

There was something in that too, that Bull would fight for Pat, though how he could have protected her if he'd taken off to who knew where, Johnny didn't know. For all that he could keep his head in a firefight like no one Johnny had ever seen, Bull hadn't always been very good at strategic thinking.

Johnny held his hands up, anyway. "It's Pat," he said, meaning it as an explanation, but the edge of brokenness crept in. He couldn't imagine his life without Pat. It'd never been a possibility. God. Two weeks around Bull fucking Randleman was all it'd taken.

"Okay," he said to himself. If he could run across that killing field in front of Foy, he could talk to his own wife. "Don't fucking go anywhere, all right?" he added, in case Bull took the chance to slip out after all.

But Bull left his ruck on the floor and followed Johnny out into the hall. That was fine. He could listen at the door all he liked. Johnny'd sit the three of them down, if he didn't think it'd make Pat feel interrogated, or himself outnumbered.

He felt like he should knock on his own bedroom door, but just pushed in, leaving it ajar. Pat was sitting on the bed, with her back to the headboard, her legs drawn up as best as she could with her belly in the way, and her arms looped around her knees. The lights were out, but enough sunshine came in through the windows to show that she'd been crying.

"Oh, Patty," Johnny said, sitting carefully at the foot of the bed. He couldn't look at her with her eyes wet and her nose all red, and be angry with her. He didn't know if he'd ever been mad at her, just terribly sad.

"God, I'm stupid," she muttered, and ground her fists into her eyes, trying to obliterate the tears. "All right." She looked up, and there was a steadiness in her eyes that Shifty Powers would have envied. "I don't know what Denver told you, but I kissed him, not the other way around."

Bull, of course, hadn't said anything, but Johnny knew how to bluff with a bunk hand. "Doesn't sound like he exactly shoved you off, either."

Pat huffed out a breath and pulled her knees up tighter. She was still wearing stockings. It was pretty easy to picture Bull just picking her up and pushing into her as she wrapped her legs around his hips. They wouldn't have had to do more than take her panties off and open his trousers. The image lingered in his mind, and he tried to wipe it out by looking at Pat, studying the face he'd known most of his life. They'd gotten married so goddamn young.

"It was just kissing," she said. "We didn't... get past that, before we stopped." She didn't say who had stopped it, which Johnny figured meant it hadn't been Bull. It had been Bull who'd decided to leave, and with all the ruckus he'd made packing, Pat had to have known, but hadn't been in there trying to stop him. Maybe she wasn't always as strong as Johnny had thought.

"Am I..." Johnny stopped before he asked if he wasn't enough for her. Clearly he wasn't. He'd tried his hardest, and it hadn't been what she'd wanted. "Jesus, this is hard," he muttered. He focused on his hands and how they were digging into the edge of the mattress the way his fingers slashed across the squares of the quilt. He could look at that, but not her face when he asked, "Do you love him?"

"Johnny," Pat said.

Johnny sighed. "Funny how much not answering a question tells a fellow." He still couldn't look at her. "Two weeks. Goddammit."

"I'm sorry, Johnny." Pat sounded like she meant it, but it didn't really matter who was sorry about what. It was still happening, and Johnny was still about to lose everything.

Well, he'd promised himself that he'd never be the kind of possessive bastard his father had been. He'd learned a lot from the old man, the first rule being that you always had to be able to stand on your own, no matter what, and the other main point landing on how not to treat a lady. "I guess it'd be easier if I moved out," he said. "The house's in my name, but we can work that out later."

"Jesus Christ," Pat muttered, and threw a pillow at him. Johnny turned to her, startled. His eyes were wet, so he wiped at them with the back of his hand. She was still curled in on herself, but at least now she was glaring at him with some of that old fire in her eyes. "At this rate, you're both going to leave, and here I'll be raising the baby by myself!"

"You said you loved him," Johnny protested.

Pat spread her arms wide, as though imploring that the Lord lift her up. "I love you too, you idiot," she snapped. "Neither of you soldiers are going to fight for this, so I guess it's up to me. How long have we been together, Johnny?"

Johnny counted back. "Married for four years, end of August, though I was away for most of those. Seeing each other another four before that, I guess. You know I never been with anyone else." As far as he knew, Pat hadn't either. Seemed like she should have taken more time to find an option she liked better before she chained herself to Johnny.

"I love you," Pat insisted. "I've loved you for eight years, and I'm gonna keep loving you until they put me in a pine box, and after that, I'm planning to haunt you."

"Oh." That put something of a wrench in Johnny's notions of being the better man and stepping aside to let Pat have what she really wanted. "Well, I was thinking I'd die first."

"Knowing you, that seems likely," Pat admitted. She reached for the pillow to toss it at him again, but Johnny snagged it first and wrapped his arms around it. He could smell her on it. He didn't think he could handle the idea of the rest of his life not smelling her hair on the pillows. "I don't love you less because I kissed him," Pat said, "and I don't want to kiss him less because I'm married to you, except I can't stand hurting you." Her voice was so full of care that he hugged the pillow tighter and tried not to think. "Do you understand?"

"I..." Johnny shook his head. It wasn't that he didn't understand, because he thought maybe he was starting to, but you couldn't just up and _say_ those things. You had to stay inside of what was allowed. What had happened to Bull was a clear example of the consequences of getting caught breaking the rules. "Then why were you letting him leave?"

"You ever try stop Denver from doing something he was set on?" Pat asked, with no small note of frustration in her voice.

"Hope so. Used to be his sergeant," Johnny answered, but he had outside of that too. He'd stopped Bull from leaving twice, and Pat had tried to do the same both times. Johnny had been able to put his hand on Bull's shoulder and still him when he was upset. Johnny had been the one to patch Bull together when he'd shown up bloody and on his last thread of strength. Johnny had wanted Bull for years, but he'd been too honourable to do anything about it.

Two weeks, and Pat had gotten what Johnny had been aching for since about as long as they'd been married. Neither of the men had been the ones to fight for what they wanted, so Pat had just gone and done it.

Johnny crawled up to the top of the bed until he was kneeling astride her feet. He balanced with a hand on her knee and leaned in, dabbing at her tears with a handkerchief. She took it from him and blew her nose explosively, then tipped her head back for a kiss. Johnny gave her one. Her lips tasted of salt, but she responded to him like she always did. He really had been an idiot to ever think that he could give this up. He should have known himself enough to know that he wasn't that unselfish.

He pulled away, and they rested their foreheads together for a while, looking at the blurry image of faces too close to see. "What if," he asked, voice just a whisper, "What if I wanted him too?"

"What?" Pat's voice shocked them apart, and Johnny fell back on his heels, flushed and ashamed at having admitted something he'd sworn would never pass his lips. He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away, trying to think of how to laugh that off as though he'd been joking, but Pat's laugh startled his attention back to her. She was looking at him with wide, incredulous eyes, but she was laughing, not angry, and Johnny wanted to kiss her all over again. "I guess we better ask him what he thinks of that," Pat said, "before we start counting our chickens."

That was the first sensible thing Johnny had heard so far. "Bull!" he called out, knowing that he was lurking somewhere in the hallway or the living room. "We gotta talk to you."

Bull only came as far as the doorway, then hovered like a reluctant spirit—or a condemned man before the gallows—but he smiled a little when he saw Johnny sitting so close to Pat on the bed. He was wearing the clothes he'd arrived in, but cleaned and mended, and his jump boots.

Johnny let Pat start. Her head had to be spinning as much as his was, but he thought she had a better handle on words than he did just then. "Johnny's not angry at us," Pat said, and Johnny kept his face still, because he hadn't decided if that was true yet.

Bull ducked his head, but didn't say anything. He didn't look like he was capable of saying much.

"I shouldn't have let you pack up, earlier," Pat started again. "I want you to stay."

"We both want you to stay," Johnny added, hoping that was meant to be his cue. That was the important part, anyway, that no matter what happened, Bull wasn't cast out again. As long as Johnny could keep people from running out into fire like idiots, he could work out how to fix the details.

"If you want to," Pat said.

Bull's posture shifted to a steady at ease, and Johnny recognised his expression from when he'd been told to stand down but knew he was still under the critical eye of an officer. He looked at Johnny and said, "That's very big of you. What I did, I swear to you, Johnny: I won't do it again."

Johnny didn't like the way Bull was giving him so much power without a fight, or the sick rush of knowledge that he could insist on his rights as a husband and ruin them all, and that Bull half expected him to. Hell, if he were a normal man, he probably _should_ throw Bull out. He could imagine what his dad would have done in that situation, and felt anger and protectiveness rising. No one was going to hurt Pat or Bull, especially not him. He had to be smart about this, walk as carefully as he ever had. Too bad he'd usually leaned on Bull to be the one who had a soft touch with the boys.

Johnny looked at Pat, and she nodded encouragingly, but left it to him to say. Perfect. "It doesn't matter," he said, which was the wrong thing, because Pat sighed faintly and Bull flinched. "Look, I ain't never done this before, so stay with me, okay?" Johnny got off the bed. This seemed to be the kind of thing a man should say standing up, but standing between Bull and Pat—between Bull and his bed—didn't seem right either. He stepped to one side so they weren't all lined up like ducks, and moved closer to Bull. "We want you to stay," he said again. That was the most important part.

He tipped his head back to look Bull in the eye and waited for him to show that he got that. He could tell that Bull had figured out that something else was going on, but was waiting for Johnny to lay it out. He wondered if this would be easier if Bull would fight, instead of leaving Johnny feeling like he was punching air. Bull nodded again.

"If you want," Johnny added. "We ain't gonna chain you up or nothing." He should say that it would be okay if Bull left, but he couldn't, so he moved on. "If you wanna stay as our friend, then we'll just keep doing what we've been doing. It's been good, ain't it? You been good here?"

"Course I have," Bull said. He shifted his weight, and pulled his hands out of his pockets like he wanted to touch Johnny's shoulder, but didn't reach out. "You made this a home for me." He looked like he wanted to say something else, but closed his mouth and waited for whatever conditions he thought Johnny was about to lay on him.

It'd be easier, Johnny figured, just to say it, but he couldn't get the words to fall into order right in his head. He felt like a child with letter blocks trying to make an alphabet when he'd never seen one before, or didn't speak the language. "If you wanna stay here, and you wanna keep kissing Pat, then that's okay too," was what he finally said.

It clearly didn't make much sense, because Bull shook his head like he was trying to get water out of his ears, and frowned at Johnny as if he thought one of them had lost their damn mind. Well, maybe he had. Maybe they all had.

"What I mean is," Johnny tried again, "is, well, I guess it's that she says she's pretty keen on you, Bull, and if you two want to be together, then I ain't going to be the one to say 'no.'"

"Just so we're clear," Pat said from behind him, having had enough of watching Johnny muck this up, "I would also be with Johnny. He's not trying to give me up. Any more," she added darkly. The covers moved and the mattress squeaked as she shifted on the bed, but Johnny didn't follow Bull's eyes back to her. Instead he waited for Bull to understand. His heart was pounding in his throat, like he'd been running.

"I don't see how you can square yourself with that," Bull finally said. The most words Johnny had gotten out of him so far. It just figured that what he'd decided to fight for was the sanctity of Johnny's marriage. "She's your _wife_ for Christ's sake. I never shoulda let her..."

"And that ain't gonna change," Johnny insisted. He moved a little closer to Bull, figuring that if he wasn't going to reach out, maybe Johnny would be the one who had to. He touched Bull's hand lightly, like he had the morning at the kitchen table. "But remember what I said when you told me about your friend in Michigan? I'm not gonna cast stones at someone for doing what I wanted to do, even if I didn't get to it. And it's not like I didn't spend the last few weeks, hell the last few _years_ , thinking I'd like to kiss you."

Bull looked at Pat again, who must have nodded because he shook his head at her in response, scowling. Johnny felt his heart fall. He'd thought that was something people said, before, but today he'd been learning it was a dizzy plummeting sensation like being in a C-37 that hit a pocket and dropped fifty feet.

"It's okay if you don't want that." Johnny squished down his disappointment and kept talking. He had to make sure that Bull stayed, if he needed to make a fool of himself to do it, that was fine. He'd done that already anyway. "I don't expect nothing of you. I was just saying I understood, is all. Hard to blame Pat for having the guts to actually go for it, and hard to blame you for wanting Pat. She's a hell of a lady, ain't she?" Explaining wasn't working, and Johnny felt his face heating with embarrassment. He couldn't read Bull's face at all, and for the first time it seemed impossible to even try to communicate with him. They used to be able to explain everything, with just an exchange of looks. "Maybe I better stop yakking, and let you two talk, huh? I'll just..." Johnny didn't know what he was going to do, but filling the laundry sink in the basement with cold water and then sticking his head in it had some appeal.

Johnny turned sideways and started to slide past Bull, who was taking up most of the doorway, but Bull caught his shoulder and held him in place. Johnny tipped his head back; they were standing chest to chest, and Bull towered over him. "I need to talk to Pat," Bull agreed, but he didn't let go of Johnny, shaking his shoulder slightly to emphasise the next words: "But don't you go anywhere, neither, all right?"

As if Johnny had anywhere to go, but he nodded and ducked down and out of Bull's reach.

The house suddenly felt far too small. Remembering the happy plans he'd been making on the bus, Johnny went and sat on the back step, tilting his face back so that he caught the afternoon sun.

After a few minutes, Johnny lit a smoke and tried to run the last half hour back through his mind. It hardly seemed like a real thing that could have happened, and none of it squared with anything he knew about how the world worked. The very idea of it felt new and dangerous.

"We're going to forge this concept into victory," he muttered around the smoke, and smiled bitterly. What kind of man was he to let himself be cuckolded in his own home? What was Pat being with both of them even going to look like? Would she sleep in Bull's room sometimes, or just go there to let him fuck her? It'd sounded so simple when Pat had talked about it, but now the messiness seemed unavoidable. It really was too small a house, and would only be more so after the baby came.

Would Pat want to have a baby with Bull? Johnny groaned and hunched forward so that his elbows rested on his knees and his head dropped between his folded shoulder blades. He knew this was all getting ahead of what was happening. Maybe Pat and Bull would talk and decide it was just going to be too complicated and difficult, and maybe Bull would leave after all, if not that day, then once he found a new place.

The true stupidity at the centre of it all was that what Johnny still wanted more than anything was for Bull to be happy. He wanted Pat to be happy too, and he wanted his kid to be raised in a house full of people who loved and took care of each other. He'd made it through a war to get that, and made sure Bull got through too, and he should be thinking of everything else as icing. It wasn't like he was losing Pat, after all. She'd promised she'd haunt him from her grave.

Johnny sucked on the smoke and tried to tell himself that he couldn't go around telling Bull not to borrow trouble one day, and then make a run on it himself the next.

Besides, it wasn't like ever given two shits about what kind of man anyone thought he was, not past Bill and Bull and maybe Major Winters.

His thoughts drifted back to the image of Pat putting her arms around Bull's neck and pulling his head down to kiss her, and Bull letting her do it. It was so easy to imagine his big hands rubbing up and down her back, her fingers twinning in his curly blond hair. Had Pat made that high, whining sound of pleasure she did when Johnny kissed her the way she liked? Had Bull's cock gotten hard enough to feel against her belly?

Johnny was going to have to get a lot better about jealousy.

He was smoking through the cigarette too fast, and the cherry was just about burning his fingers. He thought about lighting a fresh one from the end, but ground it out in the ashtray on the corner of the step and sighed. He'd been trying to cut back to save money.

Behind him, the storm door creaked open then banged shut. The porch gave a little under Bull's weight as he sat beside Johnny on the step. Their hips touched, and Bull rested his hand on Johnny's shoulder before biting the end off a cigar and looking at Johnny for a light.

He leaned down as Johnny held his Zippo up and puffed until it took. It was one of the cigars Johnny had gotten him the week before. They sat there silently for a few minutes, shoulder to shoulder like they were in an OP staring at the line.

"Starting to look like the lawn needs mowing," Johnny said eventually.

"I can do that," Bull told him. "Saw that old mower in the basement. Probably need to sharpen the blade first, anyhow."

"Sure," Johnny said. He hated mowing the lawn, and if Bull wanted to do yard work, even if it was just out of guilt over the whole thing, Johnny wasn't going to stand in his way. Besides, it wouldn't be so bad to watch Bull stripped down to his undershirt, shoulders gleaming in the sun. "So you plan on staying?"

"Reckon so," Bull said. "Long as you ain't changed your mind."

"I haven't," Johnny said. "I won't."

He wanted to ask what had gone on between Bull and Pat, but he couldn't dismiss the idea that the neighbours might be listening somewhere behind the high fence, and it might not be entirely his business anyhow.

"Thank you." Bull took a long puff of the cigar and tried to blow a smoke ring, but he'd never been any good at it, and it disintegrated in a ball then blew away. Bull chuckled, watching it. When it was gone, he said, "Seems like everything I tried to put my hand to since the war, I ended up making a right mess out of. Thought I'd done that here, too, and I couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand the idea that I'd done you wrong."

Johnny sighed, and leaned his head against Bull's shoulder. Bull felt immovable under his cheek, and the sun warmed them both. "You ain't," Johnny said. He wanted to just sleep here, but he might as well get this over with, so he said so low that the bees on the dandelions at his feet wouldn't hear him, "Just, couldn't you maybe... with Pat, maybe keep it out of my sight? Just 'til I get used to it, huh."

"Shit, Johnny." Bull wrapped his arm around Johnny's shoulders and pulled their bodies together. He bent his head so that his lips touched Johnny's ear. "What about you and me?"

The urge to squirm away and indulge his embarrassment somewhere private warred with the warm strength of Bull's arm around him. "It ain't a trade, me for her," Johnny whispered. "I don't expect nothing like that."

"Maybe you should," Bull told him, and pressed his lips to Johnny's temple.

"Really?" Johnny demanded. He pulled away to look at Bull, and he didn't seem to be making fun of him, for all that he was smiling at Johnny in fond amusement. "Bull, you can't make a joke out of this. I've had a hell of a day, and I can't handle no jokes right now."

"Really," Bull answered, "and you ain't no good at taking a joke on any day of the week."

Johnny took Bull's cigar out of his free hand and ground it out in the ashtray. "How about we go inside?"

He stood too fast, feeling lightheaded and giddy like he had when Dukeman had pointed out who was in that jeep coming back the morning after the disaster at Nuenen. He pulled Bull up after him, and they grinned at each other like they had that day, and the spring air seemed full of possibilities.

* * *

It was the Friday after when there was a knock at the door. Bull had gotten home from work about an hour before, and Johnny was lingering in the kitchen, while Pat got ready for work. She'd started going in a little later, so that the mornings together stretched out. Johnny had made pancakes again, which Bull said reminded him of Shrove Tuesday, seeing as it was his dinner.

Pat was nearest the door, and went, coming back with a package about twice the size of a loaf of bread. "Just the postman," she said, and held the mail out to Bull. "For you, actually."

Bull took it from her, the brown paper crinkling under his fingers. It was light and had give to it, the corners bending in Bull's hand. He turned it over, looking for the return, then set it on the table when he saw it. "From Ma," he said.

Johnny, standing by the stove, looked at Pat, who grimaced.

"Wrote her last week," Bull explained. He'd gone back to poking at his pancakes, and seemed intent on ignoring the package.

Pat raised her eyebrows at Johnny, and he took the hint, moving the pan off the heat and pulling a chair around to sit next to Bull.

"Remember when Smokey got that boil?" Johnny asked. "Poked at the thing for a week making it worse, 'til Roe pinned him down and sliced it open in one go?"

Bull snorted. "And you were on my ass about telling folksy stories to the replacements," he said, but he picked up the package, cutting the string with a clasp knife, and then peeling back the tape at the seams. The paper fell away, and Bull idly batted it to the floor as he stared at the bundled red wool inside. Even before he unfolded it, Johnny knew it would be another sweater just like the first, the one Mrs. Randleman had sent him north with almost ten years before.

A letter fluttered free as Bull lifted the sweater, and Johnny plucked it out of the air. It was a single sheet of cheap paper folded in half, and Johnny could see the reverse of blocky printing through the page.

Pat came forward, putting one hand on Johnny's shoulder and the other on Bull's. Johnny tipped his head so that he could rub his stubbled cheek over her knuckles. Bull did the same at the same moment, and their hair brushed together, so Johnny turned and kissed Bull's temple. It still felt strange to be able to do that after all this time, doubly so with Pat looking on, and from Bull's little gasp, he felt the same, but he leaned against the press of Johnny's mouth, instead of pulling away.

"Want me to read it?" Pat asked.

"Naw." Bull took the letter from Johnny and held it low so that neither Johnny nor Pat could read over his shoulder. His eyes worked back and forth over the lines a couple times, before he folded it closed, nodding to himself with a resignation that Johnny disliked immensely. "Well," he said, and there was a finality to the word that forbade questioning.

Whatever the letter had said, it wasn't unconditional forgiveness, though Johnny didn't understand the sweater, in that case. It couldn't have been cheap to send. He would have to wait and see if Bull wanted to tell him.

"I'm sorry. I gotta go to work," Pat said, squeezing Johnny's shoulder. Johnny stood to kiss her goodbye, and instead of a quick peck on the lips, she pulled him in and hugged him tight, whispering, "Look after him," in Johnny's ear. Then she bent and kissed Bull's forehead as he turned to look up at her.

Johnny felt his heart warm at the smile that got out of Bull. He wished they could spend the whole day together, all three of them. Between him and Pat, they could have made Bull forget the rest of the world even existed.

With Pat at work, Johnny would just have to muddle forward as best he could. He dropped back into the chair beside Bull's and rubbed his cheek on Bull's shoulder like a cat. "I got an hour before I have to go to school," he said.

"That so?" Bull likely meant that to be playful or speculative, or both, but he just sounded tired.

Johnny put his hand on Bull's knee, then ran his fingers up the inside of his thigh. "Yeah," he said. "It is."

He was still working out what he liked, when it came to lying with another guy, but having Bull naked and in bed was usually a good start. The last of the bruises were still fading under the kiss and caresses Johnny and Pat laid over his body, individually and together, and they would be gone soon. Maybe time would someday take care of the rest of it, too.

Bull shook his head, but let Johnny pull his feet, leaving the sweater on the table with the unwashed dishes, leaving the discarded wrapping on the floor. His hand was big and rough in Johnny's as Johnny led him towards his bedroom.

"Time for you to go to bed, anyway," Johnny said. He looped his arms around Bull's neck and pulled him down, his lips parting as Bull ran his hands through Johnny's hair and kissed him with breathtaking focus. Bull groaned as Johnny's fingers dug into the back of his neck, and rolled his hips forward.

With their bodies flush against each other, Johnny could feel Bull already getting hard, and felt a surge of pride at how quickly he could turn Bull on, how much Bull wanted him.

After, with Bull gently snoring in Johnny's bed, and Johnny hustling to dress for school, he paused to look down at Bull's sleeping face, and felt his chest tighten. It was possessiveness he felt, too, and a knowledge that he'd burn the world down to keep Bull safe, and if Pat didn't beat him to it, she'd at least pass him the lighter.

A large, battered ex-paratrooper with no home to go to might not be what most men wanted, but Johnny figured it'd do for him.


End file.
